Any advice on finding hidden zombies?

[Daddy Kon]

I'm failing lvl 6 clear quests because I simply can't find all the zombies. I know that they show up as red dots when they spawn and they're the easy ones to find. After hours of searching, I just end up leaving. Any advice finding all the zombies? At this point, I don't even care it it's a cheat command that finds them.


Thank you.

[CrankyOldMan]

Run around everywhere inside that quest area and make a lot of noise. They will wake up eventually!

[BioPhreak]

There are also hidden 'triggers' that spawn required zombies in for quests. Walk the intended path and it should trigger the ambush spawns with the required zombies. When there is only one area left, it should appear as an orange dot. Otherwise good luck!

[onanonehand8]

Follow the path, indicated by lighting, holes in walls and the obvious path, such as stairs. Avoiding the paths can cause a missed "switch."

[Corsin]

There is also a yellow dot that will appear (sometimes, havent figured out the criteria for it to show) that tells you where the last zombie(s) is/are.

Unfortunately could also be a bug. Fairly common issue posted here about not finding that last ever elusive zombie.

[Serious]

Like others wrote you should follow the main path though the building.
Main path means you almost never have to destroy anything but zombies, no doors, no gates, no walls, ...
That's how you trigger all zombie spawns.
Do NOT destroy any trigger, like buttons or iron gates, if you destroy a door you should trigger with a button there won't be any zombies and you can't finish the quest.

So far ~250 different quests in different POI i was able to finish them all this way.

[Daddy Kon]

Thanks all.

[Pain Weasel]

try turning on debug and type "killall" in the console. Probably won't work if they haven't spawned but you never know.

However, if you aren't seeing the yellow dot that usually means there are more than a few left, or that there are several groups of them.

[God Bless The Dead]

Some of the high tier poi's are bugged, not many, about a handful and not all zombies spawn, the new college is bugged, the old oddiggy building or whatever that is called is straight broken.

[God Bless The Dead]

Put it this way, if you've gone on the path set for you and all the zombies dont spawn when going through 1-2 times, just mark it as bugged on the map and move on, but again not many poi's are like this, maybe 3-5 out of 100's of poi's

[ElDudorino]

I learned early on not to do quests in T5 PoIs. Way too many hidden spawn points and some of the layouts can be maze-like.

Can you still get tier clear rewards by doing other tiers? 13 T4s would be wayyy more time-efficient than 10 T5s. And although I don't want to encourage people to optimize the fun out of the game, I frankly think quests in T5s are totally unfun because of the frustration they inevitably cause when you miss a spawn trigger.

[Kevin]

Every building is a maze/puzzle, after doing tons of poi's you get a feel for how they path you through them, you might have chopped through a lock door instead of following the path and missed areas of the POI.

Another thing that can happen is a zed falling though floors, at this point you will be able hear them being all angry and hunt them down.

The last most unlikely thing is you were sneaking through the poi and did not open a closet or wardrobe, or hit a spawn trigger to drop them out of the ceiling.

If you can't find them just stop sneaking and make as much noise as you can, eventually you will find a room with zeds.

[peon]

I think it was the jail poi that I couldnt complete last alpha. Literally spent 4 hours in real life going back and forth trying to figure it out before I gave up.

Turned out there was a switch that you had to literally flip to open a door and this spawned the last zombies........... so lame.

The dots are, useless in this scenario. Didnt even point anywhere near the switch.

[Tahnval]

My advice is to not do clear (or fetch and clear) quests in T5 POIs.

In addition to the usual hidden zombies, there's a plethora of zombies that don't exist in the POI unless you activate a trigger in the right way (some of the triggers are invisible, by the way).

On top of that, there's a possibility of a bug (the magic zombies teleported in from an unknown location is done deliberately, not a bug) that stops a zombie from being teleported in regardless of triggers.

Unfortunately, the way the clear system is designed counts zombies that should be in the POI, not zombies that are in the POI.

As a result, clear quests (and the clear part of fetch and clear quests) can be impossible. You can scour the POI and clear it of all of the zombies that are in the POI. That might get you close enough to the quest's count for yellow dots to appear showing you the location of the last zombie or last few zombies. You can go there...and find no zombie. Because it hasn't been magically teleported in from somewhere else. You can destroy blocks above and below. You can use the killall command in the console. You can demolish the entire POI. Whatever you do, you won't be able to kill the zombie that isn't there.

It's not limited to T5 POIs, but it's much more common in T5 POIs.

I do T5 POIs for fun, not for quests. I might take a trader job at a T5 POI, but I start from the assumption that it will be impossible to complete and I'll have to cancel the job. That way, if the quest does work properly it's a bonus and if it doesn't work properly it's not a disappointment. It also means that I am not under pressure to complete the POI strictly in the required way by the required route, absolutely linear. That's not what I play 7DTD for. I want 7DTD to be more sandboxy than that. It's a malleable gameworld. That's the sole advantage of it being fully voxel. So players should be able to break doors. Or walls. Or floors. Or to build ladders. Or stairways. Etc.

[Pain Weasel]

Originally posted by Tahnval:

Unfortunately, the way the clear system is designed counts zombies that should be in the POI, not zombies that are in the POI.

As a result, clear quests (and the clear part of fetch and clear quests) can be impossible. You can scour the POI and clear it of all of the zombies that are in the POI. That might get you close enough to the quest's count for yellow dots to appear showing you the location of the last zombie or last few zombies. You can go there...and find no zombie. Because it hasn't been magically teleported in from somewhere else. You can destroy blocks above and below. You can use the killall command in the console. You can demolish the entire POI. Whatever you do, you won't be able to kill the zombie that isn't there.

I have had the issue work in the exact opposite way on lower tier quest as well. 3 red dots on my compass, I kill 1 and the quest completes. The other zombies are still there, sometimes right in my face, but the quest is over.

I've had other quests where I have a yellow dot in the attic, but as soon as I climb up there the quest completes without killing anything.

The whole quest system needs an overhaul, but clear quests can be buggy as hell.

[Verruna]

If all else fails you can spawn yourself a quest ticket to get a mission complete trader turn in using cm/dm in console and grabbing the ticket out of the item menu. I do this when quests bug out and i should've gotten a reward, sounds like in your situation you've "basically" cleared the entire place out 99%, so shouldnt feel cheaty.